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did you mean that if it's your union its your collective bargaining group built to screw employers out of more money than the employees are worth and healthcare purchase group? Cuz then I'd agree with you, BUT I don't see how any of that has anything to do with the mechanics of performing your job.

As opposed to the employers, who want to screw employees and pay them less than they're worth?

Private employers have a profit motive that often puts their interests -- at least as regards salary, working conditions, and the like -- in opposition to their employees' interests. What is the equivalent motive for government? Why does the state so badly want what is bad for its employees?

This is why they traditionally are paid lower than the private sector.

Say WHAT!?!? Paid *lower*!?!?

You'd better check your facts. On average, government workers...particularly those in public sector unions...are paid far, far better and get far, far better benefits than those doing equivalent work in the private sector.

His facts are right. Your facts are not facts. For equivalent education and experience, and including benefits, public sector workers receive significantly less compensation (5 percent at the low end of the salary scale to 20 percent or more at the high end) than their private sector counterparts.

The way the Fox News folks get their "public sector workers make more" number is by ignoring education and experience, and by comparing the average government worker (a school teacher) with the average private sector worker (somewhere between a waiter/waitress/bartender and a janitor).
The comparison goes even farther Fox's way when they throw in the unemployed as "private sector workers".

The way the Fox News folks get their "public sector workers make more" number...

What has Fox News got to do with anything? I never mentioned Fox. I don't get my facts from Fox. Or MSNBC. Or from CNN. ABC, CBS, or NBC.

Here are a couple articles discussing the problem. The problem being, at it's root, that there is no compelling reason for government to restrain public sector union wages & compensation. Just the opposite, in fact. Politically, it builds an "unholy alliance" between politicians and public sector unions.

The pay gap between government workers and lower-compensated private employees is growing as public employees enjoy sizable benefit growth even in a distressed economy, federal figures show.

Public employees earned benefits worth an average of $13.38 an hour in December 2008, the latest available data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says. Private-sector workers got $7.98 an hour.

Overall, total compensation for state and local workers was $39.25 an hour â" $11.90 more than in private business. In 2007, the gap in wages and benefits was $11.31.

The gap has been expanding because of the increasing value of public employee benefits. Last year, government benefits rose three times more than those in the private sector: up 69 cents an hour for civil servants, 23 cents for private workers.

Labor costs account for about half of state and local spending, according to BLS and Census data. Benefits consume a growing share of that, now 34%.

There is little question that the compensation, benefits and pensions of public sector employees exceed those of many private sector workers. Whatever the standard, compensation that is commonplace for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers in California is almost unheard of in the private sector.

Consider, for example, the city of Los Angeles. Its memoranda of understanding with public employee bargaining units are posted on the cityâ(TM)s website. There are more than 80 types of clerical positions. The pay range for these is, on average, $43,600 to $53,200 per year. In general, after five years employment, a secretary will earn $53,200, well above what the private sector generally pays.

The salaries of clerical workers are commensurate with those of other city workers. Child care associates, golf starters and salaried recreation workers all typically receive more than $40,000 a year to start and all other full-time, salaried city recreation positions receive more than $50,000 a year to start.

The state has a "profit motive" too. If they can do what they want to do cheaply, they'll have more money to spend. Each department has a motive for paying their employees less, working them harder, skimping on office maintenance, etc.

RE:TFA; in my last job, every single external website was blocked by default EXCEPT for the union site. But as I've posted before, attitudes to union membership seems very different here in the UK to the impression I get of it from the US.

How is that raising the question? The governor has visibly demonstrated a desire to destroy unions and punish those unions that sided against him. You may have missed it but a prankster recently called the governor pretending to be a billionaire Koch brother. They made large donations to Mr. Walker, in return, Republicans just changed the law making it legal to sell off public utilities without any bids, so they can basically give away all infrastructure to the Koch brothers. Wisconsin has single party cons

In this particular case the union has agreed to an effective pay cut of 9%, they've also (unofficially) agreed to suspend collective bargaining for 2 years to give local governments a chance to get their budgets straightened out. In return for those concessions, governor Walker has given back... nothing. Not one thing. He trumpets the same old lines over and over again regardless of how much the pro-union groups give in and has shown no willingness to compromise. Saturday there were 70,000 people at the capitol in Madison, that's 1.2% of the population of the entire state. People are pissed, and the republicans are committing political suicide if they don't start to move towards an agreement that actually makes sense, rather than an agreement which neuters the unions, which so far seems to be the only real goal to this piece of legislation.

In return for those concessions, governor Walker has given back... nothing. Not one thing.

Why should he? Public unions are a big part of the reason the state (as many others) has problems. Reducing the power of public unions won't necessarily solve the current budget problems, but it will help reduce the occurrence of future budget problems.

To add onto this point state workers in Wisconsin have had two years of furloughs already, amounting to a 3% pay cut. This is after the state government reneged on a 3% pay raise, the first such raise in years, and state workers before these cuts received on average 4% less in total compensation than those privately employed according to the Economic Policy Institute. Now despite everything, the unions are agreeing to the proposed pay cuts. Governor Walker doesn't have a leg to stand on. Worse for him i

Around where I live, during the housing boom the landlords increased the rent by 50% and then during the bust the rents went down by 10-15%. That's not exactly balance, and the unions taking a small cut after getting huge increases in their pensions won't fix the problem either. What the unions have agreed to is tiny compared to the horrific pension system hemorrhaging money. I don't believe in destroying collective bargaining, but I don't think the unions have given enough concessions either.

but the union have agreed to give him absolutely everything he wants in terms of pay and benefit cuts.

The unions have yet to agree to reduce their power to negotiate. So they haven't given him "absolutely everything" he wants in terms of pay and benefit cuts. He's not just looking for budget cuts this fiscal year, but the long term fiscal health of Wisconsin as well. Public unions are incompatible with that.

The main problem is regulatory capture. The government officials who supposedly negotiate terms with the public union can instead become owned by them. In return, public unions can funnel considerable sums of money to the politicians they own. For example, the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin has abandoned [nbc15.com] any pretense of representing the people of Madison.

âoeWe are marching together in unity,â Cieslewicz said. âoeThis shows what can happen when the executive and the legislative branches of government work together with both union and non-union employees to protect their rights and benefits. This is the tradition of collective bargaining in Wisconsin.â

Where did the tradition of representative government go?

As long as public unions can maintain this cozy relationship with public officials, you'll have a dynamic to increase the flow of public funds to public unions and their members at the expense of the public. In the private world, this is balanced by the different interests of the business owners and the fact that the business goes bankrupt if the union demands too much.

I have yet to hear of an alternative aside from removing public unions from being able to negotiate terms of employment, that can permanently break this dynamic.

The laws of economics are purely psychological, because money doesn't exist in nature. Economics is not a science; predictions of doom and gloom because of the debt have been consistently disproven since Alexander Hamilton's doctrine of assumption assumed the states' war debts at the very founding of the country.

Before you spout, do your homework. While government jobs are good for people in relatively low-skilled jobs, most government workers are paid less than equivalent civil sector workers. The divergence grows as you get more experience and seniority. Show me one job in the civil sector where you run a department or bureau with 500 employees and make less than $150K.

I'm not especially pro-union, but without unions government workers would be subject to the whim of every politician out there.

Lastly, union activity is typically specifically allowed on government networks provided it is outside of work hours. So it's legal on lunch breaks, before and after work, etc. Union organizers are allowed to use government networks to disseminate information essential to the union members.

Governments also have strict limits on curtailing speech.

So it's a dick move, that violates employer-employee trust, and most likely the first amendment and union agreements.

Before you spout, do your homework. While government jobs are good for people in relatively low-skilled jobs, most government workers are paid less than equivalent civil sector workers. The divergence grows as you get more experience and seniority. Show me one job in the civil sector where you run a department or bureau with 500 employees and make less than $150K.

I'm not especially pro-union, but without unions government workers would be subject to the whim of every politician out there.

Lastly, union activity is typically specifically allowed on government networks provided it is outside of work hours. So it's legal on lunch breaks, before and after work, etc. Union organizers are allowed to use government networks to disseminate information essential to the union members.

Governments also have strict limits on curtailing speech.

So it's a dick move, that violates employer-employee trust, and most likely the first amendment and union agreements.

If you're going to go off on a rant like that, you might want to know what you're talking about. Having worked with such people, on the other side of the civil/private line, I can most certainly say that civil employees are often paid far more than they're worth. Especially when factoring in total compensation packages and not merely "base pay".

Show me one job in the civil sector where you run a department or bureau with 500 employees and make less than $150K.

So what? What does that 500 employee bureau do? In the real world (that is, business world), that group would at the very least be running a business worth tens of millions of dollars and might even be billions of dollars. In the government world, that bureau could have negative value (that is, it destroys value in carrying out its role), in which case, the manager as well as all the employees should be paying rather than receiving money.

Page 1. Look at the plots on page 1. Total comp from State & local is $10/hr more than private or Civilian.

If you actually read that report (ie went beyond the pictures):

Compensation cost levels in state and local government should not be directly compared with levels inprivate industry. Differences between these sectors stem from factors such as variation in workactivities and occupational structures. Manufacturing and sales, for example, make up a large part ofprivate industry work activities but are rare in state and local government. Management, professional,and administrative support occupations (including teachers) account for two-thirds of the state and localgovernment workforce, compared with two-fifths of private industry.

Second, according to a recent study at the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee, education level is higher among government workers than peer private sector, so your comment of "government jobs are good for people in relatively low-skilled jobs" makes me think you're either making everything up or worse, people in government are reaching for jobs not to their ability yet wanting to be paid like they are working to their ability.

Actually it's the opposite. A lot of government workers have education and experience beyond the level required for the job, and while using it aren't getting compensated for it. We get people with masters degrees applying for technician jobs that require an associates or 2 years experience.

Anyway, government jobs are cushy in a recession, and crap in boom times. If government jobs are so well paid and so great, go ahead and apply for one. In a year or so, there will be plenty of openings that no one will want because private sector will pay more.

Interesting topical article over at The Economist [economist.com] that's basically saying the public sector workers earn less when they have a degree (e.g. District Attorney vs. corp. lawyer). Workers without degrees earn more (e.g. janitor at the District Attorney's office earns more than a janitor at a private law firm, unless the city has outsourced the work).

They've also been running articles for a while now explaining that people with public pensions are screwed. The States have been allowed to get away with bad accounting or rather far too lenient forecasting and so there's a huge pension liability So maybe public worker's lower wages won't be compensated for by better pensions.

Many years teachers ago contibuted 6% of salary to the pension system and the state contributed another 6%. The state said, we can't afford to give you a raise this year, but we'll reduce your pension contribution to 4% and we'll pay 8%. A couple years later the state said we can't afford to give you a raise this year, but we'll reduce your pension contribution to 2% and we'll pay 10%. A couple years later the state said we can't afford to give you a raise this year, but we'll reduce your pension contribution to 0% and we'll pay 12%. A couple years later the state lost a lot of pension money through bad and fraudulent investments, but nobody was fired and nobody was jailed. A couple years later the state said "Look at those greedy teachers, they don't contribute anything to their pension, but they think they're entitled to one." And then the state said "we need to bust the teachers union so we don't have to give them that pension they didn't contribute towards and we lost."

The moral of the story is "Never take pension contributions in lieu of pay raises, since the state can take those away from you."

I dont care to cite websites, as people have told you to look at the very own you mentioned, but i'll add this.

As an employee of a TLA in the DC area, I can assure you that I make about 20k less than if I worked for a contractor. My roommate who works for SAIC, who is 2 years younger, with 3 years less experience and no masters confirms this with his paycheck. His benefits suck compared to mine, and I get a lot more leave and flexibility, but there is a reason I am renting a room in a 25 year old's condo. They make the money, govies dont.

Good god-damn, do not get me started about 19th and 20th century abuses world wide. The industrial revolution has been a violent battle ground for the poor trying to make a living in a world owned by a minority. The minorty holds the vast bulk of the wealth while the majority pays rent to them just to have a place to sleep without being arrested for loitering.

Remind me again why you are kissing the ass of the rich?

I remember. You think you will get a big pile of money by cheerleading capitalism. Here is a interesting idea; let me know what you think:
Insteading designing economic systems built on the idea of unending growth (despite the limited nature of Earth) where the money forms pools around corporations and big pools have leverage to control smaller pools, what if instead we designed economic systems that ecourage money to flow and spread to areas where it best supported society as a whole and not indivials. What if the natural tendency of money was to diffuse and not to coalesce? But you believe this is impossible don't you? You have been taught to attack this concept as naive, haven't you?

But, if I have you pegged right, you are the kind of guy that really wants a shiny car and a big house you can only use 1/4 of even when your whole family is home. Right and wrong don't matter because your are from the USA and everyone there knows unchecked capitalism is good for everyone. And you cannot get that sort of extreme wealth without someboy else doing shit work (assembling your iPhone) being paid next to nothing so your company (like Apple) can see the profit. See how that works? They work hard, and die for you. Fuck yes! That rocks for you. You pay them shit and all the profit is yours. You don't get rich paying workers a living wage, now do you? Fuck the little guy! You need a BIG car, and a BIG house. And as the poor guy in on the other side of the planet you don't even need to see the poverty that helps to fill your wallet because he is in China. WIN-WIN!

Governments have somewhat more constraints on treating political viewpoints equally than private employers would, though. So the network admins can probably block all political sites, but if they go out of their way to only block sites of the opposing political party, that might not be permitted. They also can't discipline employees in a viewpoint-discriminatory way, e.g. firing employees who surf to wisdems.org but not wisgop.org, or vice versa.

He's censored the website because he finds it a political hazard; that's obviously a free speech issue.
His behavior is evidently not about worker productivity since:
1) If the State Capitol wanted to increase worker productivity, they would block ESPN, not a pro-labor site.
2) It's perfectly acceptable to surf the web during one's OSHA mandated break.
The only reason to block the site is a crude attempt to impede the pro-labor movement.

I probably shouldn't be responding in this article, since the consensus seems to be that there was no attempt to censor, just a whitelist. But your argument seems to just be a parroting of the spin-of-the-day, which I would like to revise:

As far as the pro-corporation movement goes, I tend to think corporations are fine for enterprises in the private sector that need them. But corporations for enterprises that get paid by taxpayers? That makes no sense at all. The people they "bargain" with have no incentive for efficiency, so very little pressure to negotiate vigorously for the side they represent (the taxpayers). The public corporation are often "bargaining" with people whose campaigns they funnel money into, so there's also a conflict of interest. This inevitably leads to public corporations becoming a faction organized against the public good, the very thing James Madison warned against. So government workers can't view a website aimed against the public interest using government PCs: boo hoo.

Also, the website may be viewed as in favor of the public interest by many, it should not be up to the government to decide.

You're supposed to be working. Not doing political stuff. While it's a dick move, I rather doubt it's a first amendment violation or the end of the world (as is suggested by TFA).

Unions aren't really "political stuff". Granted, right now they are... But if we were talking about Wal-Mart employees being blocked from viewing a pro-union web page nobody would mention politics.

And unions most certainly are work-related. They're responsible for contract negotiations and all sorts of fun stuff. I certainly hope the folks in HR (at any organization) are able to get to the web pages of whatever unions they have to deal with.

All web sites are blocked by the WI state government firewall the first time they are encountered until they've been cleared as non-offensive (i.e. pr0n). The block was temporary. It was not political. It was not First Amendment relevant. It was a rule in a firewall.

Read the article - the site was up for a while before being blocked. If your firewall has a whitelist that allows anything to be there for days before blocking it and asking if it should be allowed, you need a new firewall.

yah, I saw where the administration aide said that too, and it didn't make any sense then either."The Department of Administration blocks all new websites shortly after they are created, until they go through a software approval program that unblocks them."I call total BS on that one.The admins must be kept REALLY busy if they're manually whitelisting every new site that comes up in a Google search. Do you have any idea how many "new sites" are created every day?

When you use a whitelist system, every website that isn't whitelisted is blocked. You don't need to go look for a new website. No site is whitelisted until the "program" (personnel) receive the complaint that a website is blocked. It's then assessed and if found appropriate within the rules of the organization it is whitelisted. It's pretty much the basic concept for every content web filter. AT&T does the exact same thing. Every website

All web sites are blocked by the WI state government firewall the first time they are encountered until they've been cleared as non-offensive (i.e. pr0n). The block was temporary. It was not political. It was not First Amendment relevant. It was a rule in a firewall.

This is slashdot, not Digg, let's try to rational for a change.

Yes, that is what the Governor said, however, the site was up before this and accessed before this, so this blocking had nothing to do with the state's automatically blocking of new sites.

When Egypt took down the internet, wasn't that just a rule in a firewall, too? How a site is blocked does not keep it from being censorship or political or 1st amendment. If somebody wanted to censor political speech on the internet, how else other than a firewall would they do it? And in the case of Wisconsin, why woul

Yes, that is what the Governor said, however, the site was up before this and accessed before this

Was it accessed before this on the capitol's guest network? Or was it accessed 'before this' via the local Starbuck's free wifi or similar, or somebody's MiFi?

Also worth noting is the tweet they posted [twitter.com] earlier today: "Our site is down due to server migration. Will be back up shortly." Possible that somebody updated a DNS entry in the past day or two, resulting in the site being pushed off the whitelist? Pe

All web sites are blocked by the WI state government firewall the first time they are encountered until they've been cleared as non-offensive (i.e. pr0n). The block was temporary. It was not political. It was not First Amendment relevant. It was a rule in a firewall.

Just for reference, when they put the firewall in place for NMCI (a DoD IT contractor) a few years back, they were blocking slashdot. And yes, I'm posting this from work; I was one of many who told them slashdot is work related (because it is)

Americans have a right to publish and received published information over wifi based on our Constitutional rights to freedom of press. Public parks are always provided on a "No Warranty, No Guarantee, No Commitment, Use At Your Own Risk" basis.

Oh, wait. I think I misquoted you there.

No one has a fucking right to government provided public parks, you moron, just like no one has fucking right to government provided internet connection.

What they do have is a right that if such a thing is provided, it will be provided indiscriminately of their viewpoint.

The government does not have to provide a public park, but if it provides a public park, it cannot keep people from using it to say stuff the government does not like.

The government does not have to provide a public wifi, but if it provides a public wifi, it cannot keep people from using it to say stuff the government does not like.

This is the State Capitol, a public building where average citizens of the state have business to do. Some of that business could very well be related to a pro-union agenda. If it is a resource only for the employees then it should be secured and rightly regulated. But regulating the websites based on political content by a State executive is basically EXACTLY what the first amendment was intended to prevent. You can fire them for not doing their job but you cannot limit their free speech.

If it's the only site they're blocking (or one of a small handful of sites they're blocking), then it is most definitely a First Amendment ("FA") violation. The federal or a state government can only block sites in certain ways.

First off, a pro-union website would be classified as "core political speech," which receives the highest FA protection. In order for this blocking to be upheld, the blocking would have to overcome strict scrutiny analysis. Strict scrutiny analysis is an extremely stringent analysis, and in order to survive such analysis, the policymaker would have to show (1) a compelling government interest; (2) the law is narrowly tailored to that specific interest; and (3) the policy is the least restrictive means for accomplishing that interest.

Given the Wisconsin governor's comments in the past about unions (he's trying to permanently remove collective bargaining rights from the teachers union, e.g.), I suspect there is no compelling government interest aside from a desire to shut unions up. Beyond that, almost no law/policy overcomes strict scrutiny in real life, so it's almost a given that this would be struck down.

Now I suppose this could be a TMP (time, manner, place) restriction, which would only need to withstand intermediate scrutiny. Such scrutiny requires the policymaker to show the policy is (1) content neutral; (2) narrowly tailored; (3) serves a significant governmental interest; and (4) leaves open ample alternative communication channels. This policy would assuredly fail based on its content non-neutrality.

If it's the only site they're blocking (or one of a small handful of sites they're blocking), then it is most definitely a First Amendment ("FA") violation. The federal or a state government can only block sites in certain ways.

>

No, it's not a FA violation. The government is under no obligation to provide you access to news, other people's speech, porn, or whatever else you want to get to on the internet. They aren't blocking the protesters from using their cell phones, air cards, or whatever other access they can provide for themselves. You are arguing that the constitution requires the government to provide unfettered internet access to its citizens. That is simply wrong. The government can't restrict access by, say t

You're supposed to be working. Not doing political stuff. While it's a dick move, I rather doubt it's a first amendment violation or the end of the world (as is suggested by TFA).

"If you are in the Capitol attempting to access the internet from a free wifi connection labeled "guest," you cannot access the site defendwisconsin.org.Huffinton Post [huffingtonpost.com]

What if you're not at work, but rather exercising your right to petition your government on your own time? Although the whitelisting issue has discussed in other comments, your assumption that this situation only involed people "at work" so that the blocking of "political stuff" was perfectly OK is deeply flawed. Guest internet access may not be a right, but censoring political content on a government sponsored guest network would still be a first amendment violation.

Productivity-wise, the internet is a double edged sword. We know this to be true. But if the cost of a few minutes of work unrelated political browsing means someone can do a better job with the resources on the world wide web, then it's a good trade off.

It is a first amendment issue because they weren't blocking all political sites, only the one they disagreed with. I work for the government, where we have pretty heavy internet filtering. One day I couldn't access the left-leaning HuffingtonPost, but the right-leaning Drudge Report was still accessible. I reported this and access was immediately granted to the Huffingtonpost again. Our internet usage is monitored, and, while we are allowed to take short breaks to surf the net, if we abuse that it gets reco

Selectively censoring a wifi connection paid for by the public and for the use of the public in the Capitol building for the purpose of preventing the public from being able to organize and petition the government isn't a first amendment violation? WTF?

You think the government HAS to provide access to the entire web through its "guest" service, even playboy.com or goatsecx, just because of the first amendment? Really??? - Is government also required to hand-out copies of free newspapers or provide printing presses to everyone who visits? No.

If you read the actual law it says government (specifically the US Congress) shall not prohibit speech, or press, or religion. It says NOTHING about them giving you access to these

You think the government HAS to provide access to the entire web through its "guest" service

So the government censoring your content is okay just because its available to the public? So anything the government provides to you, as part of the public, should or can be censored? At what point to you expect uncensored information?

I'm not real sure on the legality but it sure seems to well past the line.

You are saying that the government has a right to censor a service paid for by taxes.

This same logic would allow Democrat controlled states to censor Republican websites on taxpayer funded wifi services. It would also allow the government to censor books in libraries and schools since "You can get access to the 'speech' and the government doesn't care, but they aren't going to provide it too you."

So what? The question isn't "is it ever okay to limit freedom of expression." The question is "Is it okay in this instance that the government block access to a pro-union website from a public hotspot, during a large public protest, for the express purpose of stifling political debate and participation?"

The access was restored after 30 minutes or so. It says so in the article. It also says this was a new website. The system there is set to block all new websites until they are checked out. It doesn't matter what the web site is.

Yes, access was enabled, right after the shit hit the fan in national media. But I'm sure that was merely a coincidence.

You're saying that every single website that hasn't already been checked, has to be "checked out" by a government employee before granting access? For all the ga

I think the, admittedly non-sequitur, comment was about internet censorship and not suggesting Clinton had any involvement with the unions. Clinton was complaining about shutting off the internet in Egypt, et al.

You're displaying the common geek rush-to-arms that a potential etymology defines acceptable meaning. English is defined, if at all, by how she is commonly used and understood.

et al. is usually used to mean et alii (in the sense "and the other men/people") or et aliae (in the sense "and the other women"). Though you'll even find dictionaries suggesting that et alia could be the full form, used to refer to groups of both genders, this is nonsense - such a group is considered masculine. Poster was looking for

It's not as bad as it seems if you RTFA. The WiFi at the Capitol is just using a whitelist. It wasn't accessable, but it was added to the whitelist within 30 minutes of being notified that it was blocked. FTA

"The Department of Administration blocks all new websites shortly after they are created, until they go through a software approval program that unblocks them. Within 30 minutes of being notified this website was blocked, DOA circumvented the software and immediately made the website accessible,"

So it goes down for a day? This doesn't sound like much of a story. And oh look:

However, Department of Administration officials said computer software blocked the site, just like it does for any new website. It took several days for the software to update itself and when it did it blocked the site, a DOA spokeswoman said. She said there was no malicious effort to block the website.

Are we sure those complaints are accurate? This person(s) could have been connected to some guy's personal wifi hotspot. Or just be tech illiterate.

I guess I'm asking for proof that people used the capitol's wifi to connect to that site before Friday.

It'd be also nice to know what whitelist package they use. Heck, for all we know it's not a whitelist at all. It could just auto-blacklist anything above X hits an hour, until said site is explicitly exempted.

It's not as bad as it seems if you RTFA. The WiFi at the Capitol is just using a whitelist. It wasn't accessable, but it was added to the whitelist within 30 minutes of being notified that it was blocked.

Well sure, we know that now. But that is only because it has been over 30 minutes since the story was posted on Slashdot! We can finally read it now.

Let's face it. The best chance you have of being modded "+5 Informative" is to post early before you have had a chance to RTFA and become informed. I suggest we should introduce the moderation of "+5 Good Guess". Your post being the exception, naturally!;-)

Or they're using both. A site doesn't get blacklisted until it gets accessed a certain number of times in the logs (in other words, they automate the process of blacklisting high bandwidth sites). Then if someone requests, they put it on a white list so that it doesn't get blacklisted again.

That actually makes sense. If I think I need access to a site, but can't tell until I go there, it would be nice to allow it once so I can make sure that's what I actually need before going through the process of requesting that it be whitelisted.

With how much this story is getting passed around, you'd almost think this site was temporarily blocked as a publicity stunt.

But that's almost as crazy as the theory from the article: that this particular pro-union site, out of god knows how many, was purposefully blocked because they thought that'd make everyone go home. That it wouldn't just give the protesters another talking point.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Teacher Assistants created the website to share information with protesters and let them know where volunteers were needed. Democratic party officials claimed that it was available at the Capitol until at least last Friday.

So if they auto-block and then unblock websites, that's a bit restrictive but I guess it's okay. However, this website was not auto-blocked! It was available u

I find the "Democracy" cries from the left (and often from the right as well) a tad hollow. What they seem to cry is "Democracy when we're in power". We just had elections, and the Conservative Right won power, democratically, under the promise of doing exactly this thing. So Democracy is working just fine. You may not like it, but that is besides the point. Losers usually don't like losing.

And wasn't it the (D) party that blamed the shutdown of the government on the (R) party for doing the exact same thin

We just had elections, and the Conservative Right won power, democratically, under the promise of doing exactly this thing. So Democracy is working just fine.

Wrong. The Republicans in WI won power partially under the promise of making the unions pay for their benefits. They're doing that, and the unions agreed to it. That's democracy in action. However, the GOP is also trying to make a permanent end to collective bargaining, effectively crippling public sector unions forever. There was not a hint that they would do that before the election, but now that they're in power, they're trying to cram it through. Oh, except for those unions which supported them.

Virginia Code 40.1-57.2 [justia.com] "Prohibition against collective bargaining" says: "No state, county, municipal, or like governmental officer, agent or governing body is vested with or possesses any authority to recognize any labor union or other employee association as a bargaining agent of any public officers or employees, or to collectively bargain or enter into any collective bargaining contract with any such union or association or its agents with respect to any matter relating to them or their employment or service."

Texas [onecle.com] has government code 617.002. COLLECTIVE BARGAINING BY PUBLIC EMPLOYEES PROHIBITED. "(a) An official of the state or of a political subdivision of the state may not enter into a collective bargaining contract with a labor organization regarding wages, hours, or conditions of employment of public employees. (b) A contract entered into in violation of Subsection (a) is void. (c) An official of the state or of a political subdivision of the state may not recognize a labor organization as the bargaining agent for a group of public employees."

"Maybe they should start looking at all the wasted funds that are sent to the Federals each and every day"

States dont send money to the federal government, they receive an inordanant amount from the federal government. Budget bill passed in the house, if it goes through, which it will not, will devastate State budgets.